Perhaps you are familiar with the saying “an albatross around your neck.” This phrase, coined by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his 1798 poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, refers to the association of the albatross with bad luck, mishap, struggle and worry.
But the fevered sea-dreams of ancient mariners aside, the albatross is magnificent, not only in size but in its incredible adaptation to the extreme dynamic, and—most important to the bird's flight—windy environment of the open ocean.
